Many of you may remember our December post on the placement of images near ads. In that spirit, we'd like to remind you of a general policy issue: encouraging clicks.

As many of you know, our program policies prohibit any means of encouraging users to click on Google ads or bringing excessive attention to ad units. For example, sites may not contain phrases such as "click the ads," "support our sponsors," "visit these recommended links," or other similar language that could apply to the Google ads on your site. In addition, publishers are not permitted to label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements."

In light of this policy, you may be wondering if you're allowed to recommend your referral products to your users. As explained in Dan's post from February, unlike with AdSense for content ads, you can endorse your referral products by calling attention to the button or text link. If you believe in the quality of the product that you're referring, feel free to let your users know.

Generally, visitors should only click on Google ads if they're interested in the services being advertised. Encouraging them to click on your Google ads, either directly or indirectly, can lead to inflated advertiser costs -- and can cause an account to be disabled.

If you'd like to improve the performance of your ad units and attract more interested users, check out our Help Center's optimization tips to take full advantage of what AdSense has to offer.